In these circumstances it became necessary for him to think of some new occupation, and he seems not to have been long in forming a resolution to study medicine. His pecuniary circumstances, however, were so very limited, consisting of a pension of only 400 francs, that he was obliged in the mean time to employ himself as a clerk in the office of a banker in order to obtain the means of daily subsistence. The intervals he spent in study; and such were the buoyancy and activity of his mind, that even when his prospects were most discouraging, he never seems to have lost the expectation of rising to usefulness and distinction. He reverted with eagerness to the physical studies which he had commenced at college, and soon showed a preference for certain departments of natural history. He delighted to engage in controversial discussions on these subjects with his companions, and to indulge in speculations respecting the most abstruse points in physics and the phenomena of the natural world. It is not improbable that it was about this time, when the wide and varied fields of science were just beginning to open to his view, that he conceived some of those crude and fanciful notions which characterise so many of his theoretical views. It is less a matter of surprise that such ideas should suggest themselves, at the outset of his career, to one of his ardent temperament and lively imagination, than that he should have persisted in maintaining them when his knowledge was more extended and his judgment matured, although in the opinion of almost every other person their fallacy appeared demonstrable. Botany and meteorology were the branches on which he first bestowed the greatest degree of attention. Even before he left the army, he had become attached to the former; and during his stay at Monaco, had examined the singular vegetation of that rocky country. During his illness, he was lodged, for the sake of economy, in an apartment at the top of a high house, from which the clouds formed almost the only spectacle; and to relieve the tedium of his long solitude, he was accustomed to watch their varying forms and aspects, and carefully to observe all the other atmospheric phenomena, indulging his fancy in forming conjectures about their nature and origin. This circumstance, he himself states, first inspired him with a desire to study meteorology; and we can perceive in these solitary meditations, one of the causes which tended to give their fanciful complexion to many of his subsequent speculations.